Milkshake = Teaching Inspiration!

There are days of teaching I want to collectively drop-kick the entire class out the door. Then there are days when I want to pet each of their little eighteen-year-old baby heads and give them smiley-face stickers. Let’s hope tomorrow is more like the latter than the former.

Not surprisingly, I work with some really smart people. One fellow composition teacher gave a brief lecture to all of us first-year teachers on how she teaches her students about comma splices (one of the most common grammatical errors in their essays). She uses pop music, specifically, Kelis and Toby Keith. Mostly Kelis, thank goodness. Helpfully, this colleague has written out in detail her entire lesson plan revolving around Kelis’s song “Milkshake.” Tomorrow I’m going to teach my students how to use commas and semicolons by analyzing the lyrics to “Milkshake.” It’s going to be spectacular.

I bought three bags of half-off Halloween candy at the drugstore today. If the pop music doesn’t work, the sugar/bribery will.

Finally, did you know that you can get ANY phrase or word and its definition from Urban Dictionary printed on a mug? Yes, please. I’ve been using a hot pot to make tea in my office lately and this would be the best possible mug I could imagine to hold it. I would carry it with me to seminar. Haaaaa.